Julie Pradier

« Terrain de Jeux is the experimental set-up for an examination of the world and our perception of it.
Landscape as an environment we accept as given, is revealed as a result of human interaction and imagination.

[…]

Smoke excels through its ‘présence absente’ and it is not astonishing that it has always been connected to the supernatural and the magic. As soon as Julie Pradier’s coloured twirls of smoke form, they dissolve again. They are artificially produced and carefully staged. Yet the direction of their movement seems independent and arbitrary. An element of unpredictability remains, which resists our control and our expectations.

Involuntary experimenting lies in all discovery of the world and has its origin on the playground. In play we understand and reenact what we observe around us. The testing of different hypotheses, the make-believe, plays an integral part of this. » 

Bettina Wenzel, April 2010